I see from the news that Claude Choules, the last known combat veteran of the Great War, has died in a nursing home in Perth, Western Australia, at the grand old age of 110 years, 2 months and 2 days.
He joined the Royal Navy in 1916 and served until the end of the war, witnessing both the surrender of the German Imperial Navy in 1918 and the scuttling of the fleet at Scapa Flow. As if this wasn't enough, he continued to serve, first in the Royal Navy and then in the Royal Australian Navy, until 1956, seeing further active service in WWII.
I remember seeing Claude Choules in a TV programme about WWI veterans a few years ago when he was, I think, a mere 104. He was then sprightly enough to have been mistaken for a man in his 80s and his happy demeanour was a joy to behold but, sadly and inevitably, time eventually caught up with him and, in the last year or two, he became both blind and deaf.
Claude was born in England in 1901 and even appears in the 1901 census as a 1 month old infant, but he made his home in Australia from the mid-1920s. He had an enormously long marriage, around 80 years, and leaves a large family, but his story also touched millions of others. His death cuts the last remaining link with those who saw active service in WW1 although Florence Green, who lives in Norfolk and is a couple of weeks older, might argue as she joined the WRAF in September 1918 and served as a mess steward.
Claude Choules wasn't a hero and didn't much like the glorification of war that seems to have become so ingrained in modern life, but he was a man who did more than his duty and left an indelible mark on the world.
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